Flying magnetic recording heads are well-known in the art. Certain problems are involved with such heads, the foremost of which reside in designing the head to fly in very close proximity to the surface of the recording medium. It is well understood that the closer the head flies, or the shorter the distance of its elevation from the recording surface, the higher will be the flux reversal density. However, since such heads fly so close to the surface, any eccentricities, or irregularities, in the surface could cause an impact or a crash between the head and the recording surface. With prior art such a crash very often, and probably as a general rule, causes scoring or damage to the recording medium. Accordingly, such heads have been designed to fly over irregularities, i.e., be lifted with the irregularities. Such flying heads are lifted by the layer of air that is dragged along with a moving recording medium. Accordingly, it has become the practice to design a flying magnetic recording head which can be lowered onto a moving stream of air and which will have a relatively low flying height.
One of the interesting aspects of this development is that the flying head has to be loaded or forced downward toward the surface of the recording medium in order to acquire a suitable or acceptable flying height. It follows however that if the air support for some reason is terminated (e.g. due to dirt or foreign matter or some other reason) the head will impact the recording medium with relatively great force because of the loading described above. This impact in the prior art has been found to heavily damage the recording medium. Such occasions make the prior art arrangement undesirable.
In addition, the mechanism for lowering the head as well as the mechanism for loading the head can be costly. The present device eliminates the necessity of lowering a flying head onto a moving layer of air; eliminates the fear of heavily damaging the recording medium; permits the elevation of the flying head to be effected from a contact take-off; permits the flying head to come in contact upon the termination of its flight; and provides an extremely low flying height.